Riverboat Casino Crew Exempt form FLSA Overtime
Rules

November 19, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A federal
appeals court has ruled that employees of a riverboat casino
qualified for a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) exemption on
overtime pay because they were considered 'seamen.'

>Twenty-one employees of the Riverboat Services Inc.
claimed that they were entitled to overtime pay because the
ship they worked on, which catered to Indiana gamblers on
Lake Michigan, was in port 90% of the time, according to
Thompson.com.
The riverboat company claimed that they were exempt from
paying overtime due to FLSA rules.

>The FLSA requires that employees be paid
time-and-a-half for hours worked over 40 in a week, but it
has exceptions for seamen. In affirming a lower court’s
ruling, the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that
although the boat was usually docked, the employees
performed the same duties as seamen – keeping the ship
afloat, cleaning the outside of the ship, and keeping the
engines in repair – they should be classified as such.

“A blackjack dealer does not become a seaman by virtue
of leaving his job at [a] land-based casino and taking a
job at [a] riverboat casino, but likewise a helmsman does
not cease to be a seaman because he transfers to a casino
boat that spends most of its time moored,” wrote Circuit
Judge Richard Posner in his ruling. The court affirmed the
ruling of the lower court, stating that the employees were
in fact seaman and were not qualified to receive overtime
pay.